State withholds details of retiree awards
November 11, 2008: The Carcieri administration is refusing to disclose the number of unused vacation and sick days it awarded recent state retirees who, in some cases, walked out the door with severance checks averaging $10,500, but running as high as the $129,158 paid to former Rhode Island College president John Nazarian.
In total, taxpayers paid $16.5 million in severance payments to the 1,521 state workers and college employees who retired in the five months before the price of health coverage for new state retirees went up on Oct. 1. Read the full article here.
State ordered to give records to union
November 8, 2008: A Rhode Island Superior Court judge yesterday ordered the Carcieri administration to turn over contracts and other records pertaining to its privatization efforts to the union that represents state workers.
Judge Netti C. Vogel said a state law passed last year, over Governor Carcieri’s veto, gives Council 94, American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees, “a clear legal right … to access the specific public records that they sought from [administration officials].” Read the full article here.
The Internet age helps open floodgates on public records
October 27, 2008: The Transparency Train, produced by the Ocean State Policy Research Institute, and the Money Trail, a project of the Rhode Island Statewide Coalition Foundation, are part of a growing number of specialty Web sites across the nation that shine the light on government in a way that was not possible before the advent of the Internet. Read the full article here.
After rebuke from state, videos will soon return
October 1, 2008: Taping Town Council and School Committee meetings and leaving the videocassette at the library for residents to take out has long been done as a courtesy to residents.
But that arrangement is changing in the wake of a brief exchange at a recent council meeting.
For the short term, the tapes will no longer be going to the library. And when they return, they will be in the form of DVDs. Read the full article here.
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